Newly released schedule details of President Obama’s consumer czar, Elizabeth Warren, show she rushed out of a Congressional Oversight hearing to meet with fellow Treasury Department employees and to conduct a media interview with Vanity Fair.
The new schedule details follow a late May episode, at which Warren snapped at a Republican congressman when he wanted to keep her at a hearing for further questions. She claims he agreed to let her leave the May 24 hearing early, at 2:15 p.m., because she had other obligations beginning at 2:30 p.m. that day.
Warren was testifying on what her plans were for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which she currently oversees.
New details about Warren’s schedule later that day show where she was going.
From 2:30 p.m. to 2:45 p.m., she scheduled “travel” to an internal meeting with her Treasury Department colleague, Mark Patterson. From 3:05 to 3:20, she traveled to her next appointment: another internal meeting with her employee, Raj Date. She had one more internal Treasury Department meeting that day, with Neal Wolin. Then, she did 45-minute interview with Vanity Fair’s Suzanna Andrews.
Warren told the Oversight Committee’s subcommittee chairman Republican Rep. Patrick McHenry that he was “causing problems” by not letting her leave the hearing early. “We had to change everything on my schedule to try to accommodate your time,” she said. “But the agreement was that I would be out of here at 2:15 because there are other things now scheduled at 2:30.”
McHenry denied any such agreement with Warren. “You’re making this up. You’re simply — this is not the case,” he said to her at the hearing. “She’s accusing me of making an agreement that I never made.”
After the incident, Oversight Committee Chairman Rep. Darrell Issa fired off a letter to Warren demanding she return for a full day. Issa asked that Warren clear her entire day’s schedule for the hearing so Republicans could get a chance to ask her all the necessary questions.
Warren has confirmed that she’ll appear before the full Oversight Committee on July 14, a week from Thursday.